The present invention pertains generally to the field of consumer electronic devices. More specifically, the present invention pertains to the field of networked consumer electronic media devices.
A home entertainment system typically includes a number of consumer electronic media devices such as televisions, compact disc (CD) players, tuners, digital video disc (DVD) players, a video cassette recorders (VCRs) and high-fidelity speakers. Many sets of wires are usually required to connect these components together to provide the desired functionality. For example, a set of wires is required for connecting the DVD player to the TV and another set of wires is required for connecting the DVD player to the tuner. Yet another set of wires is required for connecting the tuner to the speakers. Most of these devices only have a limited number of inputs and outputs for connecting to other devices. Thus, it is not surprising that most home entertainment systems include only a handful of different devices.
Recently, a class of consumer electronic media devices has been introduced that can be networked together using a standard communication protocol layer (e.g., IEEE 1394 communication standard). The IEEE 1394 standard is an international standard for implementing an inexpensive high-speed serial bus architecture which supports both asynchronous and isochronous format data transfers. The IEEE 1394 standard provides a high-speed serial bus for interconnecting digital devices thereby providing universal input/output connection. The IEEE 1394 standard defines a digital interface for applications thereby eliminating the need for an application to convert digital data to an analog form before it is transmitted across the bus. Correspondingly, a receiving application will receive digital data from the bus, not analog data, and will therefore not be required to convert analog data to digital form. The IEEE 1394 standard is ideal for consumer electronics communication in part because devices can be added to or removed from the serial bus while the bus is active. If a device is so added or removed, the bus automatically reconfigures itself for transmitting data between the then existing devices. Each device on the bus is a xe2x80x9cnodexe2x80x9d and contains its own address space.
The provision of the IEEE 1394 serial communication bus for networking consumer electronic devices has allowed the development of a home entertainment network that consists of a large number of consumer electronic devices. In addition, the provision of the IEEE 1394 serial bus enables a single source device to provide content to multiple destination devices. For example, a DVD player located in the living room can be shared by multiple TV sets located in the bedrooms and in the kitchen. However, one problem associated with sharing source devices within the home entertainment network is that multiple users may want to use the same source devices at the same time. Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide an access control system that allocates control of the devices intelligently.
Another problem associated with such a home entertainment network is bandwidth contention. For example, if many TV sets and DVD players are connected to the home network, the IEEE 1394 serial bus may not have sufficient bandwidth to support multiple simultaneous isochronous channels for multiple video streams. Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide a method of managing a network of consumer electronic media devices. It would also be advantageous to provide a method of managing resources within a network of consumer electronic media devices such that the problem of bandwidth contention is addressed.
Yet another problem associated with a home entertainment network is that, since media (e.g., CDs, DVDs) are distributed across the network, it is burdensome for a user to locate the desired media. For example, a home entertainment network may include several DVD players and DVD jukeboxes each capable of holding hundreds of DVDs. It would be difficult for a user to browse through every devices to locate the desired DVD. Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide a method of managing resources within the home network such that complicated management and control of the devices are hidden from the users.
Another problem associated with the home entertainment network is that, when connected to the Internet, the consumer electronic devices and information contained therein may become compromised due to unauthorized access from third party users (e.g., hackers). Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide a method of managing resources within the home network such that the devices are protected from misuse and unauthorized accesses.
Accordingly, the present invention provides for an intelligent centralized resource allocation, reservation and access control system for a home entertainment network. Furthermore, the present invention provides for a method of managing resources within a home entertainment network such that accesses to resources are granted based on access rights associated with each resource. Applications attempting to access the devices of the network must do so through a software resource manager. The present invention also provides for a method of managing resources within the home entertainment network such that media-services can be delivered to a user without requiring the user to directly control the devices.
In furtherance of the present invention, the home entertainment network includes a plurality of consumer electronic media devices (e.g., Digital Video Disc Players, TVs, etc.) and a home entertainment server coupled together via high speed connections such as the IEEE 1394 bus. Particularly, user applications of home entertainment network have no direct control over the devices. Rather, user applications can only request the software resource manager, which has complete control over all the devices, to provide the media service. The software resource manager then determines whether the devices necessary for providing the media service are available. Importantly, the software resource manager also determines whether a routing path between the necessary devices has sufficient bandwidth for providing the requested media service. If necessary devices and bandwidth are available, the software resource manager then sends control signals to the devices and causes them to provide the requested media services. In this manner, resources of the home entertainment network are hidden from the users and other user applications. Because the devices are isolated from the user applications, a secure home entertainment network can also be achieved.
In one embodiment of the present invention, the software resource manager maintains a resource database for tracking availability of the consumer electronic devices of the home entertainment network. Once a device is in-use, or otherwise becomes unavailable, the device is removed from the resource database. When the device becomes available again, it is added to the resource database. In this way, the software resource manager can easily determine the availability of the devices. The software resource manager further maintains a path database for tracking the availability of the routing paths between the devices. The path database stores all possible routing paths between all the devices and the bandwidth requirements for all the devices. With such information, the software resource manager can then readily determine whether the network can provide sufficient bandwidth to deliver the requested media service.
In accordance with another embodiment of the present invention, the software resource manager provides a reservation database for storing resource reservation information. In this embodiment, the resource manager is configured for receiving a request for a future media service. The request is then stored within the reservation database. The home server of the present invention further provides a scheduler for scheduling the execution of the requested media service at a future time.
These and others advantages of the present invention not specifically mentioned above will become clear within discussions presented herein.